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  • 2 hours ago
AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reports from Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina, where about an inch of ice and sleet caused power outages, closed roads and left cleanup crews racing before the next freeze.
Transcript
00:00Here's Bill Waddell joins us in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
00:04Bill, how much ice are they dealing with down there?
00:08Hey, Ari, Bernie, good morning to you.
00:10Yeah, about an inch of ice and sleet.
00:14You can see it's just a slushy mess out here left behind along the southern side of this winter storm.
00:20Temperature-wise, it's not too bad, but the concern is going to be, of course,
00:25the overnight temperatures dipping below freezing at times.
00:28And you can see here, we're dealing with some wind as well.
00:31And road crews haven't made it yet to all of the side streets.
00:34So definitely some messy areas out here.
00:36Take a look at the view from above.
00:38This is actually quite beautiful.
00:40Looking at Greenville, South Carolina, looking like a pretty picture postcard today.
00:46Many businesses downtown, though, they are shut down for the second day in a row here.
00:51And the streets downtown looking more like a ghost town.
00:55At least the roads are clear and the plow trucks are able to get through there.
00:57Now, road crews have been working around the clock.
01:00They've been plowing, salting, and spraying brine solution on the roads and the highways.
01:06The concern moving forward at this point is ice melting later today could lead to more icy spots
01:13and hazardous travel conditions tonight and early tomorrow morning as those temperatures drop below freezing.
01:19And we've been seeing utility crews from the Midwest and the Northeast, really all over the place,
01:26staged here in South Carolina, ready to help restore power after the storm.
01:31Now, many of the trucks were left coated in an icy glaze during that storm yesterday afternoon.
01:37Some of these crews were hearing they may be diverted out of South Carolina
01:41and heading to the hardest-hit areas with the widespread power outages in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
01:48So, again, here, you know, typically after a winter storm, when they're shoveling, everybody's out doing it together.
01:55Here, I'm not seeing much shoveling, but you hear it before you see it because it is so noisy
02:00trying to crunch through this ice on the ground.
02:03And, again, the concern, not just today and tonight, but over the next few days in the afternoon,
02:08temperatures will be rising above freezing.
02:11And then, of course, you have that freeze-fall cycle.
02:14So, families here, they've got some cleaning up, some digging out to do.
02:17And I can tell you, in some of the neighborhoods we were in earlier with those steep hills,
02:21treacherous conditions for a lot of these people who do not have those four-wheel drive or all-wheel drive vehicles.
02:27So, in some of those really hilly spots, they may be waiting for the plow trucks and stuck at home for another day or so.
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